"The aim of this website is to simplify the access to the vast amount of Early music sources. It contains bibliographical lists in the different fields of early music. Sources which are available online are supplemented by links."

Antiquarian Booksellers, Autographs, Manuscripts, Music Books

“Lim Antiqua, established in 1989, selects, studies and offers autographs, manuscripts and music. The items are classified in three departments: autographs, music and books. The department Autographs contains autographs and documents from XVI to XX century by musicians, poets, writers, kings and emperors, politicians, artists and scientistsfrom Italy, Europe and other continents. The department Rare Music and Printed Music contains manuscript and printed music: sheet music and scores, chamber music, opera and full scores. First and rare editions in leather binding, illustrated editions and collections of famous musicians. The department Books contains books on music. Biographies of composers, conductors, musicians and singers; librettos in first and rare editions. Every selected autograph is offered with a description and image. New collections are published also on paper catalogues. We send them free to our customers (collectors, libraries and archives).”

“January 2010 marked the beginning of the Europeana Regia project, which will digitise 874 rare and precious manuscripts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with the collaboration of five major libraries located in four countries and the support of the European Commission. The project is expected to run for thirty months (January 2010 to June 2012) and will draw together three collections of royal manuscripts that are currently dispersed and which represent European cultural activity at three distinct periods in history: the Biblioteca Carolina (8th and 9th centuries), the Library of Charles V and Family (14th century) and the Library of the Aragonese Kings of Naples (15th and 16th centuries). These manuscripts will be fully accessible on the websites of the partner libraries and will also be included in Europeana.“

“Founded in 1996, the bookshop is established in the historical district of the old Lyons, by the banks of the Saône. Since year 2001 it is located 25 quai de Bondy.

In this place of music and meetings, secondhand music scores and books may be found along with a collection from the 18th to 21th century.

The stock is very important and regularly supplied but it is therefore impossible for me to reference all the works that are stocked. You will find after a catalog presenting the latest acquisitions.

I hope you will enjoy this website that puts the emphasis on a point which is very important to me: my bookshop is not virtual! I am at your disposal and I hope I will soon have the pleasure to welcome you in Lyons.“

Scholarly and authoritative performing editions of sacred music from the 16th & 17th centuries

“The Cantiones Press was founded in 1996 to provide attractive and authoritative editions of Renaissance choral music. The majority of works in our catalogue have either not previously been published at all, or cannot be obtained in formats which are financially viable for choirs and consorts. Each work is presented in a clear, uncluttered style, along with an introduction which gives valuable background to the music and a guide to the editorial processes by which the edition has been shaped. Our publications are therefore welcomed both by professional and amateur groups; by those with a specialist interest in the repertoire, and those who simply want to investigate exciting and intriguing new areas of choral music.”

“John Playford published a new book called The English Dancing Master in London in 1651. This volume contained the figures and the tunes for 105 English country dances, the first printing of these group social dances that were to dominate Western ballrooms for the next 150 years. The book appeared at a time of great upheaval in England. Civil disorder and natural disasters forced city residents to seek refuge on remote country estates; expanding trade and emigrations to distant lands carried Englishmen far from their homeland. Both phenomena affected the social life of the upper classes for whom these dances were a satisfying vehicle for leisure time recreation.

Playford’s slim volume sold quickly and he issued a second edition with nine additional dances the next year. Two editions of a third appeared in 1657 and 1665. He dropped the term “English” in the second edition and thereafter the books were simply called The Dancing Master. The books evidently filled a real need in Englishmen's lives and copies were very likely carried or shipped to country homes and colonial outposts as soon as they appeared in Playford’s shop.

The series eventually grew to eighteen editions of the first volume (1651–1728), four of a second (1710–1728), and two of a third (1719?–1726?) and long out-lived its originator. The three volumes eventually encompassed 1,053 unique dances and their music. Many were copied from one edition to the next so that the entire contents, with duplicates, amounts to 6,217 dances, including 186 tunes without dances and 3 songs (Dunmore Kate, Mr. Lane's Magot, and The Quakers Dance).

For this publication every dance was reduced to a code enabling comparison with similar dances. The unique or “Ur” dances were identified and collected into a database where each dance’s printing history and other information is summarized and a facsimile of the dance and its music is included. The Index presents every item by title with links to the Ur Dance Index. The Title/Link takes the reader to a bibliography of the sources. Searches can be made on all text entries as well as on the dance coding to find instances of specific dance figures in juxtaposition with others.

I am grateful to the English Folk Dance and Song Society, the University of Glasgow, the British Library, the Library of Congress, the University of New Hampshire and the Country Dance and Song Society for permission to include images from editions of The Dancing Master in their collections. I am also particularly grateful to the University of New Hampshire and William Ross, Head, Milne Special Collections and Archives, for hosting this database on the University's servers for Internet access.

“This website is a portal to information about and images of worldwide collections of medieval polyphonic music manuscripts (the resource does not include plainchant). The music and the manuscripts date from approx 800 to 1550 but we do have images from a few prominent later sources. This website includes detailed information for all the known sources of European polyphonic music (which is almost entirely vocal) and high-quality colour images of some manuscripts.“

“Since its inception in 1983, The Opera Quarterly has earned the enthusiastic praise of opera lovers and scholars alike for its engagement within the field of opera studies. In 2005, David J. Levin, a dramaturg at various opera houses and critical theorist at the University of Chicago, assumed the executive editorship of The Opera Quarterly, with the goal of extending the journal’s reputation as a rigorous forum for all aspects of opera and operatic production. Under his stewardship, the journal is resituated squarely at the intersection of performance, theory, and history, with a purview encompassing
contemporary developments on the stage and in the academy.

We invite you to join those subscribers who have found The Opera Quarterly to be the definitive publication for anyone serious about opera. With a new objective, layout, and design, there is no better time to begin reading!
Abstracting and Indexing ServicesThe Opera Quarterly is covered by the following abstracting/indexing services:

“The "Edition Musica Poetica" is a music publisher of lesser-known music of the 17th and 18 Century North German composers. Central to the Edition project is the publication of the "Monuments of the Early Modern Music," an anthology of the monuments of the late 19th and early 20 Century-oriented editions.” … (Google Translate)

“The Voltaire Foundation is a world leader for eighteenth-century scholarship, publishing the definitive edition of the Complete Works of Voltaire (Œuvres complètes de Voltaire), as well as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), the foremost series devoted to Enlightenment studies, and the correspondences of several key French thinkers.”

“Rummage on these pages for notes for recorders (and othe instruments) and for art reproductions or music seminars. Find out about the ensemble competition with workshops, courses and exhibition in Bruchsal/Baden Württemberg.

Look at title pictures and score examples.

We deliver scores in foreign countries for the real costs.

You can download our annual prospect in 2009 with all new titles as a PDF document or print out.

However, they can also order our newsletter or you can send us a message.

“The Clavis music publications were established with the aim of researching, making available and publishing lesser known and unpublished Renaissance and Baroque music and to provide new study material for professional musicians.

The idea of publishing music and in particular Baroque music , was inspired by a long term collaboration with the L’Ensemble Recitar Cantando from Pesaro, a group of young musicians and scholars specialised in 15th – 18th century vocal and instrumental music, chamber music, prose theatre and the musicological study of historical sources.

In 2004 L’Ensemble Recitar Cantando was awarded first prize ( the Arcangelo Corelli Award) in the “Dino Caravita” contest in the Ancient Chamber Music section.

As Clavis intends to expand and extend the music publications we would be very happy to receive and evaluate any proposals from scholars, musicians or music lovers who wish to submit works to our editorial team. “

“This site houses an extensive, growing archive of texts to 102,452 settings of Lieder and other classical art songs (Kunstlieder, mélodies, canzoni, романсы, canciones, liederen, canções, sånger, laulua, písně, piosenki, etc.) and other classical vocal pieces such as short choral works, madrigals and part-songs, in over 100 languages, with 12,892 volunteer translations to English, French, Italian, Dutch, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and other languages.

In this collection there are currently 64,356 texts associated with musical settings. Of these, 25,333 have not yet been located and are placeholders for cross-referencing, and 3,389 are hidden due to copyright restrictions, leaving 35,634 entirely visible to visitors. When possible, first lines are shown. “

“This database holds details of pre-1850 music sources preserved in libraries and archives in the UK and Ireland. It includes manuscripts from national, public and academic libraries, county and city record offices, cathedral and chapel libraries and some private collections. It also now includes more than 300 printed anthologies from the 16th century, with links to digitised originals in the Early Music Online collection at Royal Holloway. We estimate that about two-thirds of surviving manuscript sources in the UK have now been documented. “

Early Music Online is a pilot project in which 300 of the world’s earliest surviving volumes of printed music, held in the British Library, have been digitised and made freely available online. You can browse the digitised content in Royal Holloway's digital repository.

You can also explore detailed descriptions of the content via the British Library Catalogue. Included are in the catalogue are full details of each digitised book, with an inventory of the contents of each, searchable by composer name, title of composition, date and subject, and with links to the digitised content. (Click 'I want this' in the Library catalogue to access the digitised content.)

Full descriptions of each volume, with links to the digitised content, have also been included in the RISM UK database and COPAC, enabling researchers to locate and access this digitised content by several different means.

You may use the digitised content on Early Music Online in any way and for any such purposes that are conducive to education, teaching, learning, private study and/or research as long as you are in compliance with the terms and conditions of our licence.“

“Cambridge University Press is the publishing department of the University of Cambridge. Dedicated to excellence, our purpose is to further the University's objective of advancing knowledge, education, learning, and research.

Our extensive peer-reviewed publishing lists comprises over 40,000 titles covering academic research, professional development, over 280 research journals, school-level education, English language teaching and bible publishing. This list is growing at a rate of over 4,000 ISBNs every year and spans subjects from aesthetics through to zoology, with authors ranging from Shakespeare to English language teaching author, Ray Murphy.

A pioneer in our field, we are committed to supporting innovation in learning and teaching. We publish without boundaries, ensuring our resources are accessible across the globe, in print, digital and online formats.

We take pride in supporting community programmes across the globe. Staff are encouraged to offer practical help, advice and funding to nurture vital charitable, educational and voluntary partnerships.

Playing a leading role in today’s global market place, we have over 50 offices around the globe, and distribute our products to nearly every country in the world. We publish authors based in over 100 different countries. …“

“Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States. We are dedicated to supporting cultural diversity and increased understanding among peoples through the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of sound. We believe that musical and cultural diversity contributes to the vitality and quality of life throughout the world. Through the dissemination of audio recordings and educational materials we seek to strengthen people's engagement with their own cultural heritage and to enhance their awareness and appreciation of the cultural heritage of others. Our mission is the legacy of Moses Asch, who founded Folkways Records in 1948 to document "people's music," spoken word, instruction, and sounds from around the world. The Smithsonian acquired Folkways from the Asch estate in 1987, and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings has continued the Folkways commitment to cultural diversity, education, increased understanding, and lively engagement with the world of sound.”

Musicians of the Old Post Road introduces a new series of printed early music editions.

These edtions feature faithful and accurate transcriptions from the original sources, complete with scores and parts. Most of the Baroque era editions include continuo realizations, and all vocal works include English translation.

All editions are in downloadable PDF format. Selected editions are also available in paper copy that can be shipped to you.

It concerns the study of the Italian chamber cantata since its beginnings in the seventeenth to the last documents in the nineteenth century. The aim of Clori is to enhance knowledge, and support scholarship in the field of the Italian chamber cantata.

Its efforts are primarily addressed to the crucial aspects of all cantata-related studies: the recognition and classification of all existing sources. Clori will fulfill this goal with the realization of the first web-based index and catalogue of all Italian cantata sources. The Clori index uses a specially designed software and will be constantly updated. The index is organized on a single cantata basis. Every record includes all internationally recognized standard bibliographical fields, plus other informations, if available. …”

“Corda Music Publications have many hundreds of editions currently available, and regularly add new items to the catalogue. The website is intentionally designed without complicated graphics and animations so that information will download as quickly as possible. We apologise to those who prefer to sit by their flickering screens for hours at a time in order to admire kneecap-cracking graphics and all-singing all-dancing fantastickalls from the whizz kids of the Web. …

The Early Music Catalogue is mostly on one long page, but there are some digressions available, - for example, the work on Jane Austen's music Jane Austen, including CDs, and another features the books by Judy Tarling on Baroque String Playing and The Weapons of Rhetoric. Our Early Music editions are for period instruments from approximately 1550 - 1800. They include a variety of consort music for viols, and works for voices and instruments. There is a range of books by the internationally acknowledged teacher Alison Crum designed for those learning to play the viol. Though we specialise in early music for strings, many of the consort pieces can also be performed by recorders, etc. …”

“Over the past 40 years, Ashgate has grown to become one of the world’s leading publishing houses. We understand the value of academic research and scholarship, and we are proud of our responsiveness, flexibility and independence. Our business is driven not by text books or journals but by a program of cutting-edge research publications and specialist reference books. All books published within the Ashgate list are subject to peer review by recognized authorities in the field. We publish over 700 titles a year in Humanities and Social Science subject areas, we have well-established reprint Reference series, and we are the publishers of the highly regarded Variorum series.“